Saturday, April 23, 2016

Tenn. Defunds Univ. Anti-Christian, Gay Agendas

With overwhelming majorities, legislators in Tennessee eliminated $436,000 of state funding from the Office for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Tennessee because of its Culture War battles including the promotion of the Gay/transgender Agenda, hedonistic advocacy of "Sex Week," bans on Christmas parties, and the like. The House version of the bill diverted tax dollars to more worthy uses such as funding “In God We Trust” emblems on police cars.

"The question is how does this look not only to the rest of Tennessee, but the rest of the country?"-- Rep. Joe Armstrong, D-Knoxville"This is a slap on the wrist compared to the foolishness that has come out of that office in the last few years. They're lucky we don't shut that office down."-- Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville

University Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek vowed to continue the battles in spite of the "slap."

Lawmakers almost sunk their own efforts to defund the office, because the House and Senate couldn't agree where to put the [funds] stripped from the office. With the Legislature scheduled to adjourn this week, both chambers had to come to a consensus or their proposal would have failed.

James (Micah) Van Huss, R-Jonesborough, was the House Sponsor of the bill who wanted to use some of the funds to pay for the "In God We Trust" decals. Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, wanted all the money to be used for minority scholarships and he wasn't going to budge.

Van Huss wanted to know why Gardenhire's bill only defunded the office for one year. But Gardenhire and others pointed out that his bill prevented UT from ever using state funds for Sex Week or to promote gender-neutral pronouns, or for promoting or inhibiting religious holidays.

"But after one year," Gardenhire said, "if UT doesn't straighten up its act, then we come down on them harder."

Even if the bill was less restrictive than it might have been, pro-diversity advocates at the university were quick to denounce the legislation.

Micah Van Huss, a state representative who pushed for the funds to be cut off, said the bill would send a message to campus leaders. In a Facebook post, he wrote, "Nothing opens the closed minds of administrators like the sound of pocketbooks snapping shut."

. . . On Tuesday, hundreds of students walked out of class to protest the bill, and many of the students sat on university walkways to block movement. Many students who marched in the protest said that a Confederate flag hanging outside a dormitory window they passed (above) offered a perfect illustration of why the university needs the diversity office.

Sen. Joey Hensley, a longtime critic of the university's diversity efforts, played down the impact of the bill for minority students on campus during remarks Wednesday.

"This isn't about race — it's not about black or white," said Hensley, R-Hohenwald. "Our constituents didn't want us spending state dollars to talk about gender-neutral pronouns at UT and about not celebrating Christmas."

UT has not commented on how the diversity office would operate if the bill became law, or if the four people working in that office would lose their jobs without the state funding the office depends on. In a statement Tuesday, university spokeswoman Karen Simsen said, “It is speculative for the university to comment about pending legislation.”

Short of the diversity bill failing, the outcome was the second-best that University of Tennessee and diversity advocates could have expected. When demands to "defund" diversity programs surfaced last year, the discussion revolved around $19 million spent throughout public higher education on such diversity efforts as scholarships and faculty recruitment. Later, the Senate Education Committee recommended taking $8 million from the university's diversity programs.

The compromise adopted by a House-Senate conference committee and approved by both chambers essentially is the version approved earlier by the full Senate — taking money designated for salaries in the small office of diversity and inclusion, for school year 2016-17 only and using it to fund minority engineering scholarships.